Boris Dralyuk
@bdralyuk.bsky.social
My Hollywood & Other Poems (Paul Dry Books); translate Babel, Zoshchenko, Kurkov, et al.; odds & ends @nybooks.com, @thetls.bsky.social, etc.; teach at @utulsa.bsky.social; EiC @nimrodjournal.bsky.social
We came to LA as refugees from the USSR in 1991. Life wasn’t easy, but we persevered and, I dare say, came to contribute something of worth to this nation.
Had I experienced the following when I was a boy, I don’t know what would have become of me.
www.latimes.com/california/s...
Had I experienced the following when I was a boy, I don’t know what would have become of me.
www.latimes.com/california/s...
November 14, 2025 at 5:34 PM
We came to LA as refugees from the USSR in 1991. Life wasn’t easy, but we persevered and, I dare say, came to contribute something of worth to this nation.
Had I experienced the following when I was a boy, I don’t know what would have become of me.
www.latimes.com/california/s...
Had I experienced the following when I was a boy, I don’t know what would have become of me.
www.latimes.com/california/s...
Declan Ryan’s newest in @newyorker.com is the most accomplished poem I’ve seen in a major mag in some time—a poem that dignifies the little intimacies of one couple’s growing bond (watch the rhymes), and in so doing dignifies the inner spaces of all our lives. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
November 11, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Declan Ryan’s newest in @newyorker.com is the most accomplished poem I’ve seen in a major mag in some time—a poem that dignifies the little intimacies of one couple’s growing bond (watch the rhymes), and in so doing dignifies the inner spaces of all our lives. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
The photo was taken in the last year of Voloshin’s life. He’s the dark, diminutive figure on the right. He looks ill, unhappy. I wish I could tell him that, 75 years after his poem appeared in a small émigré edition, @pauldrybooks.bsky.social would bring it back to life in English. 4/5
November 9, 2025 at 4:44 PM
The photo was taken in the last year of Voloshin’s life. He’s the dark, diminutive figure on the right. He looks ill, unhappy. I wish I could tell him that, 75 years after his poem appeared in a small émigré edition, @pauldrybooks.bsky.social would bring it back to life in English. 4/5
A 🧵 about the magic of translation:
A woman recently reached out to me after finding snippets of my version of Alexander Voloshin’s mock epic of exile in Hollywood, SIDETRACKED, on my blog. Attached to her email was a photo: 1/5
A woman recently reached out to me after finding snippets of my version of Alexander Voloshin’s mock epic of exile in Hollywood, SIDETRACKED, on my blog. Attached to her email was a photo: 1/5
November 9, 2025 at 4:44 PM
A 🧵 about the magic of translation:
A woman recently reached out to me after finding snippets of my version of Alexander Voloshin’s mock epic of exile in Hollywood, SIDETRACKED, on my blog. Attached to her email was a photo: 1/5
A woman recently reached out to me after finding snippets of my version of Alexander Voloshin’s mock epic of exile in Hollywood, SIDETRACKED, on my blog. Attached to her email was a photo: 1/5
Am I the oracle of Orkin?… The rats of Los Angeles have much to celebrate this week. Below is the poem I contributed to a new high school guide to the flora and fauna of the LA River, illustrated by student Katie Sakamoto.
October 31, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Am I the oracle of Orkin?… The rats of Los Angeles have much to celebrate this week. Below is the poem I contributed to a new high school guide to the flora and fauna of the LA River, illustrated by student Katie Sakamoto.
If I could dance, I’d be dancing at the sight of the latest @thetls.bsky.social! Simon Morrison, who knows all there is to know about 20th-C. music, has written a humdinger of a piece on Vernon Duke’s memoir and poems, out now from @pauldrybooks.bsky.social! www.the-tls.com/lives/biogra...
October 29, 2025 at 3:56 PM
If I could dance, I’d be dancing at the sight of the latest @thetls.bsky.social! Simon Morrison, who knows all there is to know about 20th-C. music, has written a humdinger of a piece on Vernon Duke’s memoir and poems, out now from @pauldrybooks.bsky.social! www.the-tls.com/lives/biogra...
This summer the great @amitmajmudar.bsky.social approached a number of accomplished poet-translators (mistakenly including me) to reflect on particularly tricky challenges. I’m grateful to him and MARGINALIA for this opportunity to share a Julia Nemirovskaya poem. Read the piece below!
October 27, 2025 at 1:50 PM
This summer the great @amitmajmudar.bsky.social approached a number of accomplished poet-translators (mistakenly including me) to reflect on particularly tricky challenges. I’m grateful to him and MARGINALIA for this opportunity to share a Julia Nemirovskaya poem. Read the piece below!
This week two crackerjack documentarians who have been shooting a film about translation flew out to Tulsa to follow up with me and to capture my graduate seminar on the theory and (mostly) practice of the craft. My brilliant @utulsa.bsky.social students did not disappoint! They never do.
October 26, 2025 at 2:42 PM
This week two crackerjack documentarians who have been shooting a film about translation flew out to Tulsa to follow up with me and to capture my graduate seminar on the theory and (mostly) practice of the craft. My brilliant @utulsa.bsky.social students did not disappoint! They never do.
A beautiful and not at all expensive copy of George Sterling’s 1911 collection “The House of Orchids” came with a private message from California’s bohemian past—an inscription to Ida Winship, who, with her husband Ed, loved to take Sterling and his pal Jack London out for spins.
October 24, 2025 at 6:39 PM
A beautiful and not at all expensive copy of George Sterling’s 1911 collection “The House of Orchids” came with a private message from California’s bohemian past—an inscription to Ida Winship, who, with her husband Ed, loved to take Sterling and his pal Jack London out for spins.
Happy birthday to Johnny Carson (1925-2005), the dreamy subject of Austin Allen’s elegiac sonnet from 32 POEMS. “Carson”/“stars in”… The things @austinwriting.bsky.social does…
October 23, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Happy birthday to Johnny Carson (1925-2005), the dreamy subject of Austin Allen’s elegiac sonnet from 32 POEMS. “Carson”/“stars in”… The things @austinwriting.bsky.social does…
PTA’s versions are neat and all, but I maintain that George Axelrod’s LORD LOVE A DUCK (1966) is the best Pynchon adaptation we’ll ever get. How they managed to make it the same year that CRYING was published I’ll never know. How did they make it at all? youtube.com/watch?v=QOCg...
October 18, 2025 at 2:08 PM
PTA’s versions are neat and all, but I maintain that George Axelrod’s LORD LOVE A DUCK (1966) is the best Pynchon adaptation we’ll ever get. How they managed to make it the same year that CRYING was published I’ll never know. How did they make it at all? youtube.com/watch?v=QOCg...
I have just finished reading, if that’s the word for it, Daniel Elkind’s “book that tells the bones that someone has been looking for them.” It is a work of hair-raising love for those who have become “living letters on the other side of grammar.” There is nothing else like it.
October 17, 2025 at 2:38 PM
I have just finished reading, if that’s the word for it, Daniel Elkind’s “book that tells the bones that someone has been looking for them.” It is a work of hair-raising love for those who have become “living letters on the other side of grammar.” There is nothing else like it.
Billions of dollars pumped into one Latin American nation, gunboats deployed off the coast of another—it all brings to mind a 1918 anglophone poem by Nicaragua’s Salomón de la Selva (1893-1959), with whom Millay, by the way, “had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.”
October 16, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Billions of dollars pumped into one Latin American nation, gunboats deployed off the coast of another—it all brings to mind a 1918 anglophone poem by Nicaragua’s Salomón de la Selva (1893-1959), with whom Millay, by the way, “had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.”
I can’t help sharing another of Mykola Bazhan’s poems revisiting Adam Mickiewicz’s exile in Odesa and Crimea in 1825. This one is a magnificent evocation of the power of the Black Sea.
October 6, 2025 at 2:21 PM
I can’t help sharing another of Mykola Bazhan’s poems revisiting Adam Mickiewicz’s exile in Odesa and Crimea in 1825. This one is a magnificent evocation of the power of the Black Sea.
And now we have a US cover, with thanks to @harpercollins.bsky.social!
October 1, 2025 at 1:20 PM
And now we have a US cover, with thanks to @harpercollins.bsky.social!
THE LOST SOLDIERS, Andrey Kurkov’s latest Kyiv mystery, has a UK cover!
My wonderful editor is making his way through the translation now. Today he sent me a nice note, highlighting a passage he particularly admired.
My wonderful editor is making his way through the translation now. Today he sent me a nice note, highlighting a passage he particularly admired.
September 29, 2025 at 3:52 PM
THE LOST SOLDIERS, Andrey Kurkov’s latest Kyiv mystery, has a UK cover!
My wonderful editor is making his way through the translation now. Today he sent me a nice note, highlighting a passage he particularly admired.
My wonderful editor is making his way through the translation now. Today he sent me a nice note, highlighting a passage he particularly admired.
A gem of a piece on LA’s Pioneer Chicken by the late Kaleb Horton, whom I regret never having met… He mentions the chain’s cameos in a few of my favorite things, like Warren Zevon’s “Carmelita” and “The Rockford Files.” Here’s Bukowski pulling up for his fix before a reading:
September 28, 2025 at 12:49 PM
A gem of a piece on LA’s Pioneer Chicken by the late Kaleb Horton, whom I regret never having met… He mentions the chain’s cameos in a few of my favorite things, like Warren Zevon’s “Carmelita” and “The Rockford Files.” Here’s Bukowski pulling up for his fix before a reading:
I consider myself fairly well read when it comes to 20th-c. anglophone poetry. Seldom do I stumble upon completely forgotten poets who were both consistently masterful in their craft and truly original in tone. Not in one or two poems—consistently. Broomell is one such poet.
September 25, 2025 at 3:18 PM
I consider myself fairly well read when it comes to 20th-c. anglophone poetry. Seldom do I stumble upon completely forgotten poets who were both consistently masterful in their craft and truly original in tone. Not in one or two poems—consistently. Broomell is one such poet.
Mikhail Zhvanetsky, Odesa’s funniest man (stiff competition), died just after the 2020 US election. I wrote: “Now that the majority of my fellow citizens have rendered a verdict on the last four years, I hope they will not fall silent.” Well, here come real bans… So let’s talk.
September 19, 2025 at 1:47 PM
Mikhail Zhvanetsky, Odesa’s funniest man (stiff competition), died just after the 2020 US election. I wrote: “Now that the majority of my fellow citizens have rendered a verdict on the last four years, I hope they will not fall silent.” Well, here come real bans… So let’s talk.
Adam Kirsch, that great Angeleno, has weighed in on PASSPORT TO PARIS, saving a few choice words for Duke’s Los Angeles poems! Read the whole thing below. And get the book from @pauldrybooks.bsky.social!
newcriterion.com/article/arch...
newcriterion.com/article/arch...
September 17, 2025 at 8:26 PM
Adam Kirsch, that great Angeleno, has weighed in on PASSPORT TO PARIS, saving a few choice words for Duke’s Los Angeles poems! Read the whole thing below. And get the book from @pauldrybooks.bsky.social!
newcriterion.com/article/arch...
newcriterion.com/article/arch...
Ukraine’s Mykola Bazhan (1904-83) had the Midas touch; all his verse turned to gold. This let him survive, barely, Stalin’s slaughter; he could make even Socialist Realism sound good. Yet his portrait of Poland’s Adam Mickiewicz in Odesa shows that he knew what drove true poetry.
September 16, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Ukraine’s Mykola Bazhan (1904-83) had the Midas touch; all his verse turned to gold. This let him survive, barely, Stalin’s slaughter; he could make even Socialist Realism sound good. Yet his portrait of Poland’s Adam Mickiewicz in Odesa shows that he knew what drove true poetry.
Ukraine’s Mykola Bazhan (1904-83) had the Midas touch; all his verse turned to gold. This let him survive, barely, Stalin’s slaughter; he could make even Socialist Realism sound good. Yet his portrait of Poland’s Adam Mickiewicz in Odesa shows that he knew what drove true poetry.
September 16, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Ukraine’s Mykola Bazhan (1904-83) had the Midas touch; all his verse turned to gold. This let him survive, barely, Stalin’s slaughter; he could make even Socialist Realism sound good. Yet his portrait of Poland’s Adam Mickiewicz in Odesa shows that he knew what drove true poetry.
It feels right to see the faces of so many hopeful and weary, desperate and giddy men just outside the gates of success on the cover of SIDETRACKED. Voloshin’s poignant, funny poem ennobles their dreams and struggles as much as it does his own. Thank you, @pauldrybooks.bsky.social!
September 5, 2025 at 2:10 PM
It feels right to see the faces of so many hopeful and weary, desperate and giddy men just outside the gates of success on the cover of SIDETRACKED. Voloshin’s poignant, funny poem ennobles their dreams and struggles as much as it does his own. Thank you, @pauldrybooks.bsky.social!
I’m looking forward to reading some new poems at Heirloom Rustic Ales in Tulsa at the end of the month!
September 4, 2025 at 9:47 PM
I’m looking forward to reading some new poems at Heirloom Rustic Ales in Tulsa at the end of the month!
A friend from LA sent me this photo of a painting by Noah Davis (1983-2015) from a survey of the tragically short-lived artist’s work at @hammer_museum. Shook us to the core. Davis captured a visionary moment—the sight of history’s weight on the shoulders of a passing figure…
September 1, 2025 at 2:44 PM
A friend from LA sent me this photo of a painting by Noah Davis (1983-2015) from a survey of the tragically short-lived artist’s work at @hammer_museum. Shook us to the core. Davis captured a visionary moment—the sight of history’s weight on the shoulders of a passing figure…